Perhaps the strangest thing about Raising Sand, the magical collaboration between fiddler/chanteuse Alison Krause and rock god Robert Plant, is how much of a leap each of them had to take to record it. For both, they claimed that the recording required them to step out of their usual bailiwicks-- bluegrass and rock-- and into other song realms. But when you consider that bluegrass and rock are all basically offshoots of folk and blues, how could the jump be that hard?

The answer lies in their innate musicianship. Each of them understands their respective genres so profoundly, that any skitter outside of the “box” involves for them all new landscapes of vocalizing, arranging, and experimentation. To the rest of us it just sounds like more great-American music.

The difference comes down to small things. Plant, who admitted never really singing harmony before, says the project was a whole new, and therefore intimidating, song structures and performed bits that she says she would never have chosen for herself. experience. And as for Krauss, she says that she stepped out of her normal Bluegrass